Music Notes mid-year roundup: Vintage vibes, rare soul, summery indie

The first half of 2013 brimmed with masterful new rock music, and in my fixation on this record or that topic, I’ve neglected to mention much of it. In an effort to make amends, here’s the Music Notes mid-year roundup, a few selected albums released during the first two quarters of 2013 deserving of rock listeners’ attention.

The first half of 2013 brimmed with masterful new rock music, and in my fixation on this record or that topic, I’ve neglected to mention much of it. In an effort to make amends, here’s the Music Notes mid-year roundup, a few selected albums released during the first two quarters of 2013 deserving of rock listeners’ attention. And follow this Web address to listen to a YouTube playlist containing selections from what follows, and then some: bit.ly/17S5Z0p

Album: “We are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic”

Artist: Foxygen

Release: Jan. 22, Jagjaguwar

A Frankenstein’s monster deviously wrought of equal parts The Velvet Underground at its merriest, David Bowie at his rockingest and The Beatles at their spaciest, this record is hard to ignore or forget once you’ve heard it once. If Tame Impala is the shade of John Lennon tinkering in a cutting-edge 2013 music studio, Foxygen is a few well-schooled modern-era rockers burrowing through space-time to 1969 and cutting loose in a smoky, all-you-can-eat analog buffet.

Album: “m b v”

Artist: My Bloody Valentine

Release: Feb. 2, self-released

In the 22 years since Kevin Shields and co. all but defined “shoegazing” and inspired a generation of contemplative stompbox jockeys, we perfected noise-canceling headphones and made them widely available; with this long-gestating record, My Bloody Valentine renders such advances strictly useless. Like its 1991 predecessor, “Loveless,” this noise rock punch-up demands to be played at 100 percent volume, consequences (and ambient sounds) be damned. That way you won’t miss one woozy wall of distortion or melancholy dream pop leitmotif.

Album: “II”

Artist: Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Release: Feb. 5, Jagjaguwar

Furtively inhabiting some no-man’s land between up-jumped lo-fi psych-rock and snappy neo soul, singer and guitar wizard Ruban Nielson gingerly conjures the most convincing album of 2013 so far in my book. From a fever dream of The Zombies’ collective psyche or the bottom of the Mariana Trench — I’m still not sure which — comes the remote yet vital “Swim and Sleep (Like a Shark)”; more familiar but no less delicious are the arpeggio workouts and lonesome poetry of “From the Sun” and the vigorous funk of “Secret Xtians.”

Album: “Modern Vampires of the City”

Artist: Vampire Weekend

Release: May 14, XL Recordings

Intentionally or not, with its first two excellent albums, Vampire Weekend took up Paul Simon’s worldly mantle — even over the aging folk guru’s forthright insistence that he’d never cast it down in the first place on 2011’s “So Beautiful or So What.” This third record, refreshingly, mostly eschews overt world music influences, favoring acute indie pop that keeps the multicultural flair to subdued flashes and systemic color. The outcome is a pitch-perfect summer album that’s both ebullient and perfectly tasteful.